How to be the Most Productive Business Owner You Can Be

There are so many things you will need to focus on when trying to enhance your productivity as a business professional. This is something that you should be striving towards, and there are a lot of benefits to doing this. Assess the different areas of the company and how they are run, and try to make sure you think about what you can do to improve productivity moving forward.

Being a more productive entrepreneur matters, and this is one of the key things that you need to make sure you emphasize and focus on if you want to achieve success. There are a lot of factors that play a part in this, and it is important that you come up with ideas that can help in this respect. You have to make sure you use these ideas and try to come up with elements that are going to let you focus on being better and running your company more effectively.

Make Better Use of Your Time

Making better use of your time as an entrepreneur is so important, and this is one of the best ways of becoming more productive. If you find yourself with more time to do things, this can help you to perform more tasks, and perform them to a higher level. There are a lot of ways you can save yourself time as a business owner, and trying to implement as many of these as possible is something you can work on. Focus on taking steps to improve your time management right now, and reap the benefits for your company in the meanwhile. 

Prioritize Tasks

Another thing to keep in mind when it comes to improving your business is to make sure you focus on prioritising tasks. This is one of the best ways of being able to be more productive right now, and there are a lot of ideas that play a part in this moving forward. Come up with ideas you can use to improve this as much as possible and work on trying to think about the right ways of achieving this. Put the most important tasks first, and focus on getting them done in an efficient and professional manner, and keep the smaller and less important tasks for the end. This is something that you can implement right away into the business, and it’s going to have massive benefits in the future. 

Understand Your Industry

Try to do as much as possible to ensure that you focus on improving your process and the way you run the business. Being more productive is something that can be achieved by making sure you understand your industry as much as possible. Whether you work in the food industry, financial management, recruitment, or consultancy, there are so many ways of getting to grips with the industry and gaining a deeper understanding of it. 

As you can see, there are a few things that you can do when it comes to improving your business and this is certainly something you need to make the most of right now. There are a lot of ideas you can use to help you play a role in this. Making yourself more productive is so important, and there are many things you can use that will go a long way toward helping you achieve this as much as possible right now.

Is Procrastination Getting in the Way of Your Dreams?

Is procrastination holding you back from pursuing your dreams? Do you find yourself planning and planning some more? How can you put a stop to it so you can move forward? Learn the simple tips to overcome that issue so you can pursue your dreams once and for all!

 There’s nothing that can get in the way of your dreams like procrastinating. You primarily do it because you’re afraid of failing or not achieving success. You may also have issues letting go of control or are afraid of separation. Additionally, you might feel like you’re getting things done but you’re ignoring what’s really important. Some of the most successful people in the world have been procrastinators, it can help you think. The important thing is not to let it get out of hand so you can move forward. 

Even though procrastinating can have a detrimental impact on productivity, go easy on yourself from time to time. Overcoming this issue takes work. Here are some tips on how to finally focus and avoid unnecessary procrastination.

Make a Short-Term Plan with Realistic and Attainable Goals and Long-Term Roadmap Moving from Point A to Point Z 

Write down your plans for the future and make a detailed list of defined milestones. If you want to pursue a master’s degree at an Ivy League university or study at a particular school in a specific field, such as PhlebotomyU, highlight the name, program, time commitment, and what you need to do apply and enroll in such a program. You should also write down your larger career goals and practical steps towards achieving them. Then you should reduce these goals into smaller actions; for example, if you’re looking to go back to school, start with an internet search, writing an email, or making a phone call.

To make the process manageable, work your way through the tasks, one step at a time. You don’t have to follow the exact order but at least stick to the list. If the next job on your list doesn’t seem possible today, you can choose something else to do that’s more convenient and then make strides toward achieving the larger goal. Small incremental steps are the way to success.

Switch Off Your Phone to Focus on What is Important and in Front of You at that Time 

It is always a better idea to ditch your phone and social media for a while if you’re trying to focus on achieving your dreams to eliminate distractions. Mute push notifications or if you have to, leave your phone in another room so you have space and concentration to get your work completed. Multi-tasking is more of a detriment to productivity than a benefit, despite what others say. It’s difficult to avoid your phone for a while but sometimes it’s the best way to get back into your own headspace so you can start plowing through all of the things on that long to-do list. 

Indulge and Enjoy Small Achievements without Feeling Guilty

Tick off the things you have done and plan to give yourself a pat on the back in a figurative sense or treat yourself to something like a massage, a new handbag, or an exercise class you’ve been wanting to take for the last six months. Small rewards will have a positive impact on your productivity, even if it’s just the satisfaction you get from a tick. 

As you complete more tasks, your confidence will build, and you will feel automatically motivated to complete more tasks. Consider how accomplished you feel after you’ve studied for an exam and received a near-perfect grade. Completing those most dreaded tasks in a satisfactory manner will provide the same type of gratification. 

Be Self-Aware and Be Smart

Even though you’ve put loads of work into making that spreadsheet of your yearly expenses and gone to town organizing your kitchen, it’s important to realize when it’s actually starting to delay you getting on with what you really need to do. At times, you may bury yourself in unimportant tasks, so you don’t have to focus on those most-dreaded tasks like writing and launching a sales page, drafting, and deploying that long-awaited email sequence, or leading that presentation.

I know that whenever I have to launch a new course or program, that’s a little scary, or sending the first draft of a project to a client for review, I will find ways to procrastinate so that I don’t have to do it. This only causes more problems in the long run. The key is having the self-awareness to catch this tipping point when your planning is procrastination in disguise. It’s important to know when to recognize this happening.

Eliminate the Negative Thoughts and Try to Stay Positive

Getting angry, frustrated, or disappointed with yourself if you don’t do something right the first time, won’t help to motivate you. Actually, it will only frustrate you more. It’s better to take a beat and take the time to focus on self-care or wellbeing activities that make you happy.

Remember your health is the most important thing and being too hard on yourself can be draining. And remember, being unmotivated, unfocused, tired, and drained will only lead to more problems.   

Do What You Can without Overdoing It 

One of the best ideas is to essentially quit while you’re ahead, at least for today. If you’re working through that plan and you’ve managed to achieve something, something that you’re proud of, cut yourself some slack and take a break. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself to do more after you’ve achieved one or two milestones on that to-do list. It’s much better to end on a high note and feel proud of what you’ve done for the day.

Investing In Productivity: 4 Things That Are Slowing You Down

As a founder and business leader, it’s up to you to squeeze every last drop of productivity out of every day and every team member. To create an environment where your team feels motivated, satisfied, and ready to meet the challenges of each new day, this is critical to the long-term success of your business.

One of the curses of entrepreneurship is that you’re never quite able to look back on what you’ve accomplished and say that you’re completely satisfied. But by building a culture of introspection and support, your business can reach new heights of operational excellence, thereby making employees feel comfortable and maximize their output; the kind that leads to the legions of loyal customers and years of sustainable growth.

However, this kind of culture doesn’t just come overnight. You need to make an investment in your business productivity. And that needn’t necessarily be a monetary investment. It can simply be an investment of your time and attention on the things that could be slowing you down in business. Let’s take a look at some potential barriers that could bottleneck your team’s productivity and overall output.

Your operations

Your operations play a large role in defining your business and how well it runs. As the old song says, it ain’t what you do, but it’s the way that you do it. As a proactive entrepreneur, you should be constantly looking for new ways to make your operations more efficient and your employees more productive. This may mean relying more heavily on marketing automation, investing in new software, tools, and equipment, or simply being more receptive to training your employees in new ways and borrowing operational ideas from your competitors. 

Lots of entrepreneurs are very protective of doing things their way, even it is may not be the most efficient. But if you’re prepared to be fluid in your definition of what your way is and how the business functions, you’ll find that it’s easier to make your operations more efficient. 

Your comms infrastructure

In the 2020s, every business is a tech business to some extent or another. And the more reliant you become on digital communications, the more you need to ensure that you have the right digital infrastructure to keep your operation running efficiently. 

Structured cabling specialists such as richmondcomm.com ensure that your cables are organized in a way that not only prevents them from becoming a safety hazard but also confirms that they maximize the speed of your internal and external digital communications. Speedy communications, especially wi-fi, is critical to running a business efficiently. What would happen if your phone and wi-fi connection went down? How would you run your business? Simply put, you can’t.

You’re doing too much in-house

As a small team, you’ve all had to double up in your responsibilities and learn new skills as your business has grown. But as you strive for further growth, could you be biting off more than you can chew? That zeal to do everything your own way can actually prove detrimental to your operations and actually prove less cost-effective than outsourcing to an expert. Consider how much time you’ve spent on learning more skills that you could have essentially outsourced for a few hundred dollars? How much more time would you have had to focus on growing and scaling the business?

For us at FemFounder, we know we aren’t experts on setting up email sequences, so we outsource that task among many other duties. This enables us to focus on our strengths.

Third-party service providers won’t compromise your ability to do things your way. They simply take some of the pressure off your team’s shoulders so they can get back to doing what they’re best at. 

Your team are multitasking

Finally, neuroscience has proven time and again that there really is no such thing as multitasking. There’s just doing several things badly! If you want to squeeze the most out of every day, make sure your business has a zero-tolerance policy on multi-tasking. 

Ways to Keep Your Staff Sharp While Working From Home

Across the world, businesses have taken to working remotely, and while this is great for their mental health, as well as their physical well-being, it can raise some concerns for managers. By being absent from the office and engaging with their colleagues, they could risk losing the sharpness that made them so good at their jobs before everything changed. 

As a manager and a leader, you need to ensure that they return to the office, whenever possible, with the precision and proficiency, you remember from them. While you’re happy to let them stay on top of their personal lives and take advantage of the lockdown measures, you should also consider how to keep them sharp. Here are 3 ways to do so. 

Find Challenges For Them 

It will certainly be tricky to find challenges for your staff while they are away from the office. It’s not as if you can bring them into client meetings or introduce them to aspects of the business they might be unfamiliar with. You’ve also got to deal with the existing challenges that remote working offers.

However, it’s not impossible to find something for your most promising employees to take charge of, even if it’s as simple as curating a meeting or developing strategies that can benefit the office in the face of extended remote working demands. 

Extra Training

Your staff will likely groan at the thought of extra training, but it could be crucial for keeping their office skills as sharp as they need to be. Providing online sales training for your team will allow them to engage with the skills that they may feel a little rusty with right now, and they also have the opportunity to learn new approaches that can improve their performance. 

You can also consider recommending free courses that will increase their understanding of the industry. There are a plethora of online resources that can provide useful diplomas for your team, and they feel more confident with working alongside you once everything returns to normal. 

Check Up On Them

Piling the work on can lead to burnout, however, and sometimes, staff needs to feel like they are appreciated as people rather than just employees. If you take the time to check on them regularly through scheduled meetings, they will feel better and give it their all when it comes to whatever is asked of them. 

Making an effort to discuss any concerns or problems regarding the company is especially beneficial for small businesses. We all understand that times are uncertain right now, so giving your staff the peace of mind that everything will be okay soon enough can ease anxiety and allow them to pursue their work more effectively.  

Sharp As a Tack

While many aspects of the business are like riding a bike, it’s still important to make sure that the skills they have picked up along the way stay fresh in their minds. By offering this support for your staff while working from home, you can expect an increased level of performance once they come back.

4 Ways to Increase Productivity in the Workplace

As any successful business owner will tell you, a happy workforce is your most valuable asset. Happy, motivated employees will be more productive and ultimately make your business more successful. Bored, miserable staff will not help you in the long run. Keeping employees happy while still working at the best of their abilities is a tricky tightrope to balance, but as long as you provide them with the right tools and environment, you can keep your business running at the top of its game.

Here are four easy ways to increase productivity within your business.

Be more efficient

Take a thorough look at how your business is currently operating and see if there is room for improvement. Look for areas in which time and money are not used to the best effect. Talk to your staff and see if there is a more efficient way they could structure their days or prioritize their tasks. Be open to changing the way you work.

Have the right technology

Technology can be your best friend or your worst enemy, depending on how it is used. It can be a blessing or a distraction. Personal phones are an excellent case in point. They’re essential for making business calls and responding to emails on the go, but how often do they distract us from more important work?

Whatever industry you are in, there will always be new technology and software popping up that makes things quicker and more efficient. Office-based companies may find time management software makes their staff more efficient, but could, on the other hand, find that the resources spent on implementation and staff training are not worth the while. Manufacturing firms and other companies dealing with small parts could use a digital parts counting scale to save time spent on counting thousands of objects by hand. However, there is a risk of user error if the staff isn’t given adequate training in how to use new technology. Before deciding on whether or not to adopt a new system, weigh up the pros and cons.

Reduce distractions

A workplace full of distractions is not a suitable environment in which to stay productive. Chatty colleagues and visitors coming in and out can make it hard to concentrate on work. Consider whether you could have a room or area of your office devoted to quiet work for employees who need a bit of time to focus. Phones, mainly social media, are one of the biggest distractions. While it won’t be practical, or welcome, to enforce a no phones policy, encouraging them to switch off will help them stay productive. Lead by example, and do the same.

Make sure everyone is happy

A happy employee is a productive employee. If the staff is working in a positive environment that makes them happy, they will want to work hard. If they are miserable at work, they will check-in and out each day without any care for what they are doing. Show how much you appreciate them and reward them for every job well done.

Keep your staff motivated and working to the best of their ability by following these tips.

How Employees Can Work from Home Efficiently

By: Rada Abdo

The distractions at home can prove to make productivity more of a challenge. Here are some tips on ways to work from home to make the process easier: 

Create a working space

At Venngage, we started the work from the home week by sharing pictures of our home office setups. Creating a workspace for yourself will prevent you from staying in bed all day. 

Set specific working hours 

It’s easy to be distracted by the TV or your roommates while at home. You don’t want these distractions to have you work sporadically throughout the day, it will break the work-life balance you need to have. Having a rigid work schedule will help your focus. 

Have the right tools 

Make sure you have all the right equipment to help your efficiency at work. Important equipment for working from home include strong internet and a laptop. 

Construct a rigid structure 

Structure will create balance and effectiveness. Before you start your day, have a list of important tasks you will prioritize. This will prevent you from being easily distracted by other things. 

Communicate all the time

Constant communication with your team is important. An issue is that it will never replace face-to-face communication and things may be lost in translation. This is where video conferencing comes in handy. At Venngage, we are constantly communicating via Slack. 

Be wise about your flexibility

You are your own judge. Knowing which hours you are most productive in is important. You may have an appointment or certain household tasks that require your attention in the middle of the day. Knowing how to take advantage of the flexibility is up to your discretion. 

Track your progress

Creating specific tasks that are scheduled on your Calendar with time blocks, help you track your progress. Creating checklists help as well. You can use Apps like RescueTime to help track your productivity. 

Take breaks 

The Pomodoro Method helps you be more strategic about how you work. It advises a 45-minute work interval, followed by a 15 break. Having breaks eases your mind and relieves you of stress and pressure. 

How Organization Can Help Your Stock Room

They say that cleanliness is close to godliness. If that’s true, then organization-li-ness is certainly close on the totem pole. This is especially true when we need to prepare for an important event such as a corporate meeting or a public speaking engagement. However, it’s also essential for the most practical of daily business realities, in this case managing a stock room to perfection.

A stock room is more than just a place in which items are stored to be used for a particular purpose. A room of this nature may preserve an item’s freshness or condition for perfect use despite long periods of storage. It may also be that, such as in the case of a shoe store, a backroom stock needs to be accessed quickly and feasibly in order to guarantee a sale and provide a better service to our customers.

Organization can help your stock room, but it’s important to submit to the logic of this most reliable of environments and apply some of your own. To that end, we have some useful advice:

Color-Coded Organization

Color-coded organization can truly help you mark certain items depending on how they should be handled, transported, or where they should go. Bag sealing tape can be used in this way, allowing you to ensure your packages are prepared for freight in the best way, while also providing visual identification to ensure staff knows how to handle a certain item. Visual referrals such as this can help you save time by avoiding the need to continually refer to indexed measurements before managing your stock room. The more foolproof you can make this process, the better.

Continual Rotation

Rotation of your stock is, of course, important to get right. Placing newer items near the back and vice versa can help you avoid losing out on items due to a passed expiration date while retaining some backup items can help you in the case of a massive order or intensive sales need. Rotating your stock is also the best means in which to continually inspect it to retain its hygiene, and will help you continually organize your space in the easiest possible manner. With signed dates and accountable names tracked for every change made, you can ensure that confusions are cleared up in a matter of seconds.

Stock Handling Accountability & Management

Accountability, as explained prior, can help you understand whose role it is to clean the stockroom, and it can also help you understand where problems might be caused. For instance, it can be that in a kitchen environment you have no cameras, but if you notice that restaurant food is going missing, tying this to the last person who signed into a said room with their keycard may not be a hard task, provided you can verify those details correctly. The more you are able to ensure your stock room is organized, the better you can protect it.

With advice, we hope you can allow organization to better aid your stock room, day and night.

Creating A Productive Office Environment

When it comes to having an office, you will want to make sure there is a suitable environment to work in for everyone in the office and this is because you want to make sure that everyone is kept busy and productive. In this article, we will discuss some of the ways that you can consider creating a productive office environment.

Have the Right Office Equipment

If you are looking to make sure you create a productive office environment then, one of the first things that you should do is make sure you have the right office equipment. You’ll need functioning computers and the right kind of furniture so that your staff is comfortable when working. You can find plenty of advice on ergonomics online so make sure to have a look over this.

Make Sure There is Enough Space

Another way that you can create a productive office environment is to make sure that there is enough space in the office to work in. This is because if you are working in an office with a lot of furniture and objects then, you can find that there can be a lot of distractions. If you work in an office with more space and don’t have as many objects lying around, then it can help it become a more productive environment.

If you are looking to make your office more spacious, then you can consider business storage options. Storage options are very useful when it comes to businesses because you can keep all the equipment not in use in the storage unit and go at any time to take or bring any more items with you when necessary.

Create to Do Lists

The next way that you can make sure you create a productive office environment is that you create a to-do list. To-do lists are great to manage productivity in an office because it means you will be able to distribute the work out that needs to be done and that all the members of staff will always have something to do and get them done quicker rather than having to look for things to do. When it comes to creating to-do lists, you will need to make sure you know all the work that has to be done and prioritize the more important things so that they can be done soon as possible over the things that don’t need to be done as quickly as other tasks need to be done.

Set a Good Mood

Another one of the ways that you can create a productive office environment is to make sure that you set and increase mood in the office. This is because if there are a good mood and atmosphere, people will become more focused on their work throughout the day. This can include offering more breaks, hosting staff days out of the office and more. You should start with asking your staff how you can lift their mood when in the office.

Try to Find the Best Options for You

Make sure you keep these options in mind and find the best options for you when it comes to creating a productive office environment.

Getting The Most Out Of Your Employees

In a sense, you can think of your employees as being one of the most important resources that you have. They are people first and foremost, of course, but you can also think of them as a kind of resource which you need to learn to use in the best way you can so that your business can succeed as much as you want it to. The truth is that getting the most out of your employees is a tricky business in itself, and one which you might find you need to practice plenty if you are going to be able to get it right.

In this article, we are going to take a look at some of the things that you can do in order to ensure that you get the most out of your employees. You might find that a lot of this is easier than you think, while some of it might be a little more challenging.

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Sign A Contract

A lot of this has to do with how you approach red tape. You might be keen to run the kind of business where you don’t really have to worry about much paperwork, and that might be a modern way of doing things, but the truth is that this way of running a business does not often work out very well in the end.

If you want to make sure that you and your employees have the best possible working relationship, and that you are getting the most out of them, then you need to think about having them sign a contract with you, stipulating what you expect from them - and also what they can expect from you. The right contract management can make all the difference to what you ultimately get out of them, so it’s important to bear that in mind.

Encourage Them

As a manager, one of the main things you should also be doing is trying to encourage your employees to do their best at all times - something which you might find you have to learn as a specific skill as time goes on. The truth is that encouraging your colleagues and employees to work their best is a necessary part of ensuring that the whole operation works out, so this is something that you are going to want to think about. By encouraging your employees, you will be sure to get more out of them, and your business is going to do much better indeed too.

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Provide The Basics

There are plenty of things which you need to provide as the employer, and by making sure that you do so, you will be able to ensure that you are getting as much out of them as you possibly can. Think about what it is that they need to do their job, and make sure that you are supplying it to the best of your ability at all times. That will make a huge difference indeed.

How Constructing A Capsule Wardrobe Can Seriously Boost Your Productivity

It’s no secret that minimalism in all forms can help you to boost your productivity. If you’re looking to get more done every day and stop wasting so much of your precious energy on making decisions that don’t matter all that much, then you might want to make a few changes to the way you’re living now. One thing you can specifically do to boost your productivity is create a capsule wardrobe. 

If you consider how much time you spend choosing outfits, you might come to the conclusion that constructing a capsule wardrobe is a great idea. After all, choosing an outfit can be difficult, and it takes a lot of energy on making decisions that could probably be better spent elsewhere. 

Let’s take a look at the benefits of creating a capsule wardrobe:

• Make fewer choices and save time

• More energy to tackle what’s important 

• Save money because you’re no longer spending money on clothes you hardly wear

• Because you’re buying fewer items, you can afford to spend a bit more on higher quality pieces that will stand the test of time 

• More confidence in your look as you look more ‘put together’

• Find your personal style 

• Less physical clutter = less mental clutter 

It’s also worth mentioning how some of the most successful people in the world very rarely go all out with their outfits. People like Mark Zuckerburg, for example, can be found wearing the same t-shirt and jeans most days. They know that their mental energy is valuable, and they don’t want to spend much of it deciding on what to wear. 

Now that you know how constructing a capsule wardrobe can help you, let’s take a look at how you can create your own. 

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Figure Out What Matters To You

Make sure you know what matters to you before you start your capsule wardrobe. You can find all kinds of lists out there to help you, but it only matters what you want to include. Have a good idea of your color palette and the shapes that best suit you before you begin. 

Simplify

Get rid of things you haven’t worn for a while. You don’t have to completely clear out your wardrobe, as long as you wear and love the items you keep. 

Only Buy High Quality 

Only buy high quality items and avoid things like counterfeit handbags if you want your wardrobe to have longevity. As you’ll be buying less, you can afford to spend a little more. 

Only Buy Things You Truly Love

Don’t buy anything for the sake of it. You should really love everything you buy! 

Only Buy Items If You Can Mix And Match Them With Multiple Items 

You should only buy and include an item if you know you’ll be able to wear it with multiple items. The idea of a capsule wardrobe is that you can mix and match to your heart’s content! 

How Many Items Should You Include?

Some people recommend as few as 10, while  others will suggest as many as 50. Ultimately it’s up to you, but you need to make sure you don’t defeat the purpose!

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